Sygate Firewall comparison (CPU usage)

[flexy]

hi,

i am doing tests with ZoneAlarm, Sygate PF 5.5 and now Kerio 2.15

I used Sygate as my favorite firewall app for some time, but today i made a strange observation:

Whenever i play a certain game (ie: MultiTheft Auto, which sends a lot of very small UDP packets in multiplayer) the CPU usage of Sygate (the smc.exe) goes up anywhere up to 12% which is unnecessary high and (IMHO) a very big downside to a otherwise excellent firewall.

Sygate firewall 5.5 does not add ANY significant CPU usage otherwise, eg. downloading from P2P (overnet, limewire) or streaming video....only with online gaming (UDP packets) the usage goes up...and i do NOT want to waste 10% or so of my CPU just the firewall works..especially i gaming...

I did all these tests then with ZoneAlarm 4.5 and Kerio, and no matter whether i was streaming, playing or downloading i NEVER saw any significant CPU usage.

So..i just got Kerio 2.15 and i am test running this and it looks good to me.

Btw. in addition, i still can not (frm my perspective) confirm excessive ressource hogging (CPU, memory) by ZoneAlarm ?! But with all the horror stories.....i just switched from ZA to Sygate...and now to Kerio.

greets

 

[InlineFive]

Out of curiosity, what are the horror stories for ZoneAlarm?

 

[flexy]

ZA is supposed to use a lot of memory and CPU cycles amongst other problems like incompatibilities etc. Cant really confirm, but then i also didnt do that much extensive comparisons. The only obvious thing i found is that Sygate uses about 13% CPU when you play online with a lot (3000/sec) of small (20bytes) UDP packets which i kinda dislike.